will read for food

There are several great library scenes in this book, but the best has to be the one in the crypt. If Hell has a library, it would be like this:

By the sparse light of our candles I began to see things I had not been able to see before – wonderful things. I could now make out long tables before me, tables of ancient solidity. And on these lay piles and piles of books – crumbling leather-bound volumes and gilt covers that picked up the glimmer of my candle flame. There were other objects, too – never had I seen such an inkstand, or such strange quills and pens. There was a stack of parchment, glimmering in the candlelight, and an old typewriter supplied with thin paper. I saw the gleam of jewelled bindings and boxes, the curl of manuscripts in brass trays. There were great folios and quartos bound in smooth leather, and rows of more modern volumes on long shelves. In fact, we were surrounded; every wall seemed to be lined with books. Holding up my candle, I began to make out titles here and there, sometime an elegant bloom of Arabic in the center of a red-leather binding, sometimes a Western language I could read. Most of the volumes were too old to have titles, however. It was a storehouse beyond compare, and I began to itch in spite of myself to open some of those books, to touch the manuscripts in their wooden trays.

Dracula turned, holding his candle aloft, and the light picked out the glow of jewels on his cap – topaz, emerald, pearl. His eyes were very bright. “What do you think of my library?”

“It looks like a – a remarkable collection. A treasure-house,” I said.

–Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian